Rant on how I plot my stories

This blog will probably get drowned among the others, but anyway. I'm by no mean a pro-writer, far from it actually, English's my 2nd language and I can barely write in my own language. (Choosing among 17 tenses is sadly not the easiest feat.)

As long as I can remember, I've always liked stories to the point that I wanted to create my own, and early on, I've used them to take a break away from my problems or as most would say, I would "trauma-dump." And it kinda became my main base/guideline for my stories, for the better and for the worse as I picked up the wrong "habits," and the more I'm trying to learn about plotting a story, the more I'm seeing how I've learnt the wrong things. Which is why I wanted to write my process down, so I can better see how I do things, and to compare it later on with what I'm learning.

Most of the scenarios I write are my own view on society and my surrounding world, either criticising it or questioning it, and although it might be what I consider a noble idea I'm more than probably poorly executing it since I have no knowledge in writing or plotting ( ᵕ̩̩ ᵕ̩̩)

After the general theme is chosen, I usually go for the characters. I've seen most people fleshing out the characters out as a later step, but for me, the story follows the character, not the other way around. The (main) character usually stems from a trait or attitude I think would be interesting to work with, after all having a fleshed out and distinct personality only makes a character more likeable imo And from then the appearance will slowly get built.

Then the universe the story takes place in (which is a step I sometime switch up with the character one). Basically if I want the world to be fantasy, sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, etc. which comes easily with the characters theme.

And finally, the goal of the MC and how they'll achieve it. Which is the most laborious of all step. I usually decide by following the basic narrative structure as it comes naturally, and I thankfully learnt it at school, so: 1)Exposition 2)Tension 3)Climax 4)Fall 5)Denouement. And by playing with it by either changing the length of some steps or by repeating the structure multiple time (creating "arcs"), the narration of the story creates an atmosphere.

ex: The Promise Neverland, the 1st step "exposition" is short, leaving the reader distraught as they're immediately getting into the swing of things. And as their plans fails multiple times the first few times, repeating step 2-3 but never quite going to the next steps, builds up the tension. The structure never reaches its end.

And with time, being exposed to multiple references throughout my daily life, the universe (characters, setting, plot) naturally evolves as new ideas comes to mind and feel like they need to be applied. Even if sometimes it does more harm than good so they can't all be applied and end up in a completely new story.

It was longer than expected, but still not quite as clear and detailed as I wanted this short rant to be, but whatever, next time I'll take it into account~